Haven't we seen this barefaced sideshow before? GOP sabotages another Democratic president "to save America." Predictably, racism has made wary, less culpable Obama an easier mark than wayward Clinton. Deserved and not, abuse heaped on Clinton, today's most popular politician, portrayed a sex-crazed, flimflam American, distinct from the socialist-Nazi-Muslim-foreign-born illegal who menaces our freedom.

For years extremists running the GOP set higher goals for its tactical weapons of mass destruction than stray Democratic presidents too few won often enough to sustain shrill outrage. Boundless umbrage against progress calls for a monumental enemy worthy of foaming indignation. And lo and behold, this crusade came forth upon the earth: #1) to revise our structurally flawed Founding Document, with new blemishes emerging every year. That reinforced #2) to reverse the march of time, turn back the clock not just on science, better informed citizens, fair taxation or workable oversight and regulations. The enemy's agents blazoned forth "activist" federal judges mishandling the Constitution hunting up that slew of manufactured rights, namely voting, legal, civil, housing, gender, retirement, and women's.

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Clearly, this will not do, whether it's called democracy, modernism, diversity or secularism. Inflamed, rogue patriots are obligated, "no matter what it takes" in Sarah Palin's phraseology, to band together, rise up, and redeem our "lost honor." Like a secular Rapture where good comes from wreckage.

Ridiculing evolution or global warming are merry diversions for fact-challenged goobers still smarting from baffling science classes laced with hard words. Ditto, the ongoing, tiresome gag about where Obama was born, more laughs. Sure, blocking abortion and gay marriage qualify as God's work, but the Republican U-Turn on history won't whistle-stop at Happy Bush Days, even the Happier Reagan Days. No, this sick puppy of a country needs major surgery, guided by Dr. Rand Paul's scalpel slicing up hard-won civil rights laws. That reverts to some illusory "free market golden age" when "separate but equal" ruled over water fountains, bus seating, and lunch counters.

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Guys with guns make the rules

The notion to rework the Constitution parallels the delusion one group owned this lost golden age, or the country, amplified by extremist appeals to violence. Why, if that ornery Congress pumps out one more fundamentalist-unfriendly law, Tea Party wingbat Sharron Angle warns, watch out for "Second Amendment remedies" (translation: armed insurgences by rogue militias). Her fellow loonies don't know how President Washington harshly pulverized such uprisings, like the Whisky Rebellion no Tea Party, that one.

Angle's brigade can then get join up with racist, secessionist, Christian militias, and/or anti-abortionist terrorist groups who equate gun violence with freedom. At last year's Conservative Political Action Conference, the NRA's Wayne LaPierre voiced this very theme (while distorting history): "Freedom is nothing but dust in the wind 'til it's guarded by the blue steel and dry powder of a free and armed people . . . Our founding fathers understood that the guys with the guns make the rules." Isn't this only brazen "might makes right" morality, damn the Constitution. Actually, the British had tons more guns; they had other, closer wars to fight so they relinquished rebellious Colonies.

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"Back to the good old days" reverts beyond "60's. If the right guts Social Security, furthering disemboweling the New Deal, we're talking 1920's when men were men, women stayed in the kitchen, gays hid in the closet, poll taxes kept minorities from polluting elections, and other good stuff. If Republicans castrate the 14th Amendment, denying native-born babies citizenship, we regress to post Civil War Days. If we truly obliterate church-state distinctions, on the march since W., that regression revisits pre-Revolutionary eras, before our founding documents codified our best values.

For a decade, Robert S. Becker's rebel-rousing essays on politics and culture analyze overall trends, messaging and frameworks, now featured author at OpEdNews, Nation of Change and RSN. He appears regularly at Dissident Voice, with credits (more...)